Entry · Friday, May 8, 2026
Plate XVII., Hoover Dam, downstream face, viewed from the U.S. Route 93 bypass bridge.
Photo by Cédric Dhaenens on Unsplash
Hoover Dam
/HOO-ver dam/ n.- 1. A concrete arch-gravity dam spanning the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, completed 1936; 726 feet from foundation to crest, 660 feet of base thickness tapering to 45 feet at the crown.
- 2. colloq. The pinnacle of inter-state thicccness, five years of construction, 4.4 million cubic yards of concrete, an entire city's worth of poured aggregate compressed into one architectural mass.
In a sentence,
"The Hoover Dam, viewed from the bypass bridge at midday, reads as thiccc in a register the human eye is not built to immediately scale. Reference points become useless."
Etymology,
Originally designated 'Boulder Dam' during construction (1931–1936), formally renamed for Herbert Hoover by the 80th Congress in 1947. The structural form (arch-gravity) is named for its dual containment strategy: the concrete wall both arches into the canyon walls (compression) and resists by sheer weight (gravity). The name and the form are both, at this point, immovable.